Haight Ashbury is adopting a tougher stance towards its homeless dreamers amid concerns over crimeOn a blooming sunny morning in San Francisco,Stacey Griffith and her daughter, Ariana, or are pointing an iPhone skyward to take a picture of the pole on which the Haight and Ashbury street signs intersect. They are visiting from Chicago on a 15th birthday trip for Ariana. “The Haight Ashbury is just such an iconic place for American and world history,” says Griffith. “I wanted her to see it and be fragment of the area where it all began.”Fifty years ago the word hippy was coined to report the kind of young people who flocked to Haight Ashbury to find themselves and gave birth to a counterculture that changed America and the world. The area is heading for the 50th anniversary of the 1967 Summer of Love when the influx of dreamers reached its peak and the world took notice. But some local residents reflect all is not well in today’s Haight Ashbury, a vibrant, and affluent neighbourhood of varied and colourful wooden Victorian and Edwardian houses where the marijuana fumes on the street can overwhelm. The neighbourhood’s history,clement weather and parks also draw young, homeless free spirits from across the US.
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Source: theguardian.com